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Marine debris isn’t a new phenomenon
in Alaska. Items have been washing up on shorelines across the state for decades. But when
the Japanese Tsunami washed away entire towns in 2011, things changed. North America braced itself for an onslaught of debris.
Government scrambled for clean-up funds, and citizen volunteers, armed with
bags and good intentions, took to the beaches. Tsunami remnants are still en route,
and as KMXT’s Brianna Gibbs reports, the next wave of debris could bring some
new obstacles.

Last
year the State Department of Environmental Conservation funded an aerial survey
over much of Southeast and Southcentral Alaska.
It wasn’t the first time the coast was photographed, but the images collected
during that survey showed something new on Alaska’s shorelines.

--(Marine Debris 1:03“Massive quantities of foam.”)

Tom
Pogson is the director of marine programs, outreach and education for Island
Trails Network in Kodiak. He joined the organization shortly after the Japanese
Tsunami. Since then, Pogson has devoted himself to cleaning beaches, especially
those covered in foam.

--(Marine Debris 2:15“*Footsteps* You can see here
how these little pieces of foam start to get harder and harder to pick up. And
then they start becoming part of the beach. There’s an awful lot of it here
when you start looking. I mean look at it all, look at all that.”)

Pogson
said it was the arrival of the foam that convinced the state tsunami debris was
coming. But it was also just the tip of the iceberg.

--(Marine Debris 3:15“You know the video footage
of the tsunami event is powerful because it shows, you know walls of water, 20
and 30 feet high, washing inland and mowing everything in its path down and
washing it back out to sea.”)

That’s
a problem, especially for the brigades of volunteers that will be cleaning up
Alaska’s shorelines this summer. As heavier items make their way across the
Pacific Ocean, it’s likely that more and more hazardous material will start
washing up.

--(Marine Debris 5:10“There’s things that are
commonly washing up on beaches that are not in the purview of every person, in
terms of their safety.”)

The items that
could start washing up won’t only pose threats to the environment and people
around them, but the arrival of hazardous materials will bring with them new
removal challenges. Pogson said ITN is working toward those certifications.

--(Marine Debris 6:15“But it’s not something we
can’t offer the general public. And it’s a difficult problem. And in the end we
will have this training, we will get the funding, we’ll stet the time aside,
but at least for this season we’re going try and minimize everyone’s exposure
to that by just find it, record it, photograph it, report it. We can find
someone who’s qualified, potentially, to get it, but we don’t have the
training, we don’t have the funding.”)

Pogson
said he doesn’t want to discourage the good Samaritans across the state, he
just wants people to be aware of the type of marine debris showing up.

--(Marine Debris 7:22“To ask people to go out and
pick up hazardous materials is not something we can do, nor is it something
we’re trying to do. We want people to avoid those things. If you don’t know
what it is and it looks suspect, you can document it, photograph it, tell us
where it is. The state DEC is very interested in anything that might be
potentially hazardous, and or toxic, so we’re recording those and forwarding
information to them. But it’s not for everyone.”)